


the irony in flying

by frafeyrac



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Grantaire Angst, Grantaire/Jehan (one sided), Hurt Grantaire, M/M, Past Abuse, Wingfic, based on a plot bunny/headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frafeyrac/pseuds/frafeyrac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>He thinks of the nights he spent drawing red and gold feathers<br/>of the nights spent praying to a god he no longer believes<br/>he thinks of his childhood spent wishing for wings to fly with</p>
  <p>He is the only one left.<br/>He is the outcast.</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	the irony in flying

Grantaire finds it ironic that he's the only one who wanted to fly, who as a child prayed to a god he no longer believes in that the feathers would spring from his back and he would feel the wind on his palms as he flew into the sky. He can remember his first family, he doesn't like calling them his real parents, they were never what parents really should be to him, and he was only four or five but he had tried to pick a feather from the floor and it had been snatched from him and he'd been smacked hard. He can remember his third family that smacked him and sent him away for touching his foster-fathers wing. 

It was intimate to touch the feathers of another. It was far too intimate for a foster child to reach out and touch in curiosity. Grantaire hadn't understood, the rules each foster family laid down so different to the last, and he was ten before he found someone who told him the rules about wings, and how the world worked and a dark-haired girl on the street corner with a dangerous smile had explained to him why the adults had wings, and that hundreds of years ago the scientists had tried to create the perfect human and they had taken the wings of a great bird and sewn them onto the back of a man and it took them four tries before they got it right, and then the man flew and all his children then were given the gift of wings.

He kept his drawings private, he showed no one the feathers that flew out of his hands in golds and reds and blues and the wings he drew on the backs of boys with sharp faces and girls with soft curves. He doesn’t show his eighth family, and he doesn’t show the girl with the dark hair either. His sketches change as he grows older, there’s a new steel there and when he’s seventeen and on his tenth family, who have tried their hardest with him, but he’s worn them out after four years of sending them running in circles after him, he draws a beautiful boy laid out with his wings sprawling from his back, naked as the day he’s born. He’s so proud he stops to look at it before he shuts his sketch book, and his tenth foster-mother glances over his shoulder and she stops him shutting his book, and she cries and tells him it’s beautiful. It’s the first time beautiful has been used to describe anything Grantaire has done, and it’s the one time he no longer wishes for wings.

He was only nineteen the first time he met Jehan, and he saw his sharp features and gasped because it was the boy he had drawn for all this time, and there was a strange fate that drew them together, he was convinced of it. Jehan asked him about the ink that splashed down his left arm that could never be scrubbed off with any amount of soap, and Grantaire had tried his hard to seduce him without realising how young he was.  
When Grantaire met Enjolras he was twenty and he had been unable to breathe, his thoughts only how he wanted to run his hands through his hair and touch the skin of his face to see if it was as smooth as marble. He had found a new subject to paint, and lord did he paint him. Grantaire felt as if he knew every inch of Enjolras more than Enjolras knew it himself.

\---

He has yet to tell this to Enjolras, but now he’s sat there at Grantaire’s right and their elbows brush together because there isn’t much room on the couch since Jehan got his wings, and they’re beautiful wings. Grantaire wants to reach out and touch the turquoise feathers, the down where his wings meet his back, but he knows he can’t. He knows it’s inappropriate and reserved only for the most intimate of touches. Jehan has had his wings the longest, he knows how to control them and slide them back into his body with a ripple of muscle and a searing pain and then they’re hidden from the outside world, but he prefers not to.

Grantaire doesn’t watch the screen of the TV, he’s focused more on other things. He wonders what made Jehan grow his wings, and what made him grow them so early. He’s the first out of all his friends and they’re such a bright blue and they clash so horribly with his red hair that cascades down his back. Grantaire motions for him to sit and winds his hands through it now, pulling strand over strand as he plaits for him. Grantaire apparently is the best at this, although he would disagree. 

Feuilly’s wings, Grantaire thinks, are beautiful. He knows Feuilly doesn’t like them, they’re a simple fawn brown but they’re one of the softest shades Grantaire has ever seen and he thinks they match Feuilly and Grantaire asks if he can paint them, even if it makes Feuilly feel better. His heart dies a little inside, and his gut twists in panic. What if he never is to get his wings, and then he turns back to the alcohol he’s promised too many times he’ll give up. 

He thinks of his prayers to a god that always fails him and he sighs and wonders what a foolish child he was, and then he thinks that even then when he was thrown from family to family, he still had hope. Éponine tries to reassure him when he sleeps off his drink on her couch in her tiny little flat, and she understands because no one in her family has wings. She is constantly hiding from those who consider her to be a ‘pure human’, free from the mutation. Éponine has a wider understanding of how this world works now that she’s no longer ten and trying to talk to a little boy on a front step in the rain. Grantaire tells her she doesn’t understand.

Bossuet’s luck means he grows his wings later than he should, and they’re the hideous colour Grantaire’s painting water ends up but Bossuet laughs louder than he should and Grantaire can’t help but feel that he would be happy to have wings the colour of his painting water if he meant he had them. His friends are all growing their wings now, Jehan, Bahorel, Feuilly, Bossuet. He saw Marius last week with copper wings that matched his hair and Cosette with pastel pink. Not even Éponine understands his turmoil, he doesn’t bear the marks that come before your wings and his blood does not run red enough for that of a pure human.

\---

He finds himself growing closer to Enjolras, the beautiful boy who fuels his hands when he paints and when he does other things he won’t think about in his presence, because he’s convinced Enjolras can read minds. He grows closer, if it’s possible, to Courfeyrac and Combeferre and Joly. They are all that’s left now, and he’s sleeping on Éponine’s couch when she shakes him awake roughly.

“Wake up R, there’s someone calling for you.” 

He takes the phone she hands him, leaning on his arm and still half asleep.

“We need you down here, it’s Courfeyrac. Something’s wrong.”

He can hear someone (Jehan?) crying in the background, and he hasn’t heard Combeferre sound so shaken before. 

“Where’s down here?” He mumbles, still unsure of where he even is. There’s a hammer pounding his skull into an anvil and he’s sure it’s some ridiculous time in the morning.

“Courfeyrac’s flat, we need you here Grantaire.” 

Grantaire fumbles with his clothes and struggles with the button on his jeans but he’s awake by the time the cold street air hits him and he all but runs to Courfeyrac’s apartment. 

Jehan answers the door and hugs him close, as he hears a scream come from upstairs and Jehan leads him up. Courfeyrac is curled up on the bed, Enjolras is typing with a speed Grantaire doesn’t think is natural and Combeferre is trying his hardest. Grantaire takes a minute to realise it’s his wings, and there’s something wrong. His left wing is bent and broken, it hangs lifeless from his body and Combeferre is trying his hardest to bind it and make a splint but it’s hard when Courfeyrac’s whole body is shaken. 

“Tell me he’ll be alright, please.” Jehan breathes, gripping onto Grantaire’s hand and he shrugs. He doesn’t know if it will ever be alright for Courfeyrac, and he thinks that the only thing worse than not growing wings is to have them come through and not be able to fly. Grantaire stays that night, holding onto Jehan’s hand and letting Jehan talk to him and it’s only in the soft morning light when Courfeyrac is too tired to do anything other than sleep that Grantaire notices that there’s a deep purple feather in Jehan’s wing, that matches the same deep purple of Courfeyrac’s and he’s sure he will find a bright turquoise nestled in Courfeyrac’s purple. He’s tired and he walks home and sleeps for the rest of the day on Éponine’s couch and she says nothing. 

Courfeyrac changes once his wings have come though, and Joly changes and he seems to worry a lot more. He confides in Grantaire about his growing anxiety, how he has no marks on his back and he feels like a misfit now Musichetta and Bossuet have their wings and how now Musichetta’s coffee coloured wings now have a feather of Bossuet’s strange paint-water wings, yet there is nothing there to show her bond with Joly, or Bossuet’s bond with Joly and it hurts him. Grantaire hands him his bottle and looks at Enjolras, and he feels a jealousy that he’s able to live without worry of what will happen if his wings never come through, or if he ends up like Courfeyrac with his broken wing. He can tell even Combeferre is shaken. 

Combeferre calls him in the morning to tell him he has his wings, and they’re beautiful. Grantaire feels nothing but jealousy, as Combeferre tells him that his wings are as blue as the night sky. Joly calls him later, in tears. He says that he feels his wings will never come through and there’s something wrong with him, and he’s so panicked that Grantaire invites him out for coffee and lets Joly cry into his shoulder. He doesn’t remember when he became the one they all came to for comfort, but obviously he’s good at it.  
Joly’s wings come through by surprise, he never noticed the marks himself but he wakes one morning and notices a white in Musichetta’s wings that hadn’t been there before, and there’s a white feather in her hair and when he strokes his fingers through it another falls from his back, and he cries. He tells Grantaire that he had seen her that night, and Bossuet, that he had told them of his worries and they had told him what he needed to hear and he woke up with wings. Joly’s wings are white and pure, and Grantaire wonders how he’ll ever keep them clean. 

It is just him and Enjolras left now, the only two without their wings. Enjolras isn’t bothered, and Grantaire isn’t sure how he ends up in bed with Enjolras with him curling around his side, but he does.

\---

He’s twenty two now, and Enjolras might as well be sat in his lap.

“It’s ironic.” 

He pauses and Enjolras looks at him with an expression that tells him to keep talking.

“It’s ironic that the boy who spent his life wishing he could fly cannot grow his wings.” 

“Mine haven’t come through either yet.” 

Enjolras hums and traces his lips with his thumb. Grantaire isn’t sure how they ended up like this, living out of each other’s laps. Enjolras is a hard person to love, a person who doesn’t think before he speaks and keeps his emotions locked away in a box in the back of his head. Grantaire thinks that he must be a hard person to love too sometimes, his various families always told him so right before they handed him back.

“You will get them though.” 

“So will you.”

Enjolras isn’t in the mood to talk tonight, Grantaire can tell by the way his eyes spend their time searching his face and tracing every line and bump and scar.

“I won’t.”

“You will. Your parents had the mutation.”

Enjolras traces his cheekbones and Grantaire thinks of how he Enjolras likes to feel things with his fingers, as if to check that they’re really there. 

“I can’t remember my parents more than they slapped me and they shook me and they burnt me.” 

He doesn’t wish to talk about this, and he doesn’t reply to any questions that Enjolras asks. 

They fall asleep tangled together, but Grantaire wakes alone and there’s a single red feather on the pillow next to him. It is bright and majestic and in the morning light he swears it is gold. It is the feather he painted all those years ago and spent his youth sketching and colouring, and now that it is here next to him he wants to sob.  
He is the last one, yet he is broken and there is something wrong.

\---

The mutation makes blood darker, Grantaire discovered after he fought with Éponine and she hit her head on a wooden table and cut it open. Her blood was red, a bright red that he was brighter than the blood from his own body and she had hissed and told him to tell no one.

Grantaire grows distant from Enjolras, he tells himself he doesn’t do it on purpose but he’s lying. He pushes himself away, he is broken and Enjolras deserves better than him. They all deserve better than him. Even Montparnasse has wings, as black as his dark ways, but he still has them. Grantaire tells no one his wings haven’t come through yet, he cannot risk himself to suffer the way the pure humans suffer, the way Éponine would suffer if they found her. Grantaire just says he has tucked his wings away when strangers ask, and he lies about the colour and says that they’re a plain brown because it’s an average colour. Grantaire learnt quickly that browns and greys where the most common colours, and no two people ever have the same wings. He learns quickly that red wings are rare, not as rare as true green, but he sees the way that they watch Enjolras and they listen to him with a new respect and a reverence that usually is reserved only for the holiest of priests. Grantaire paints Enjolras with his wings, and he tips them with gold and then rips it up. He cannot bear to look at it and be reminded he is the only one left.

He goes to bed with Enjolras pressed against him but there is no love in his heart, there is only longing for new muscles in his back and to finally know what it feels like to run his hands through feather. Enjolras tells him he can see marks the next morning, but Grantaire refuses to believe him. He gave up checking in the mirror three months ago after spending hours glaring at his back and the marks that show where his wings are meant to grow. 

That night Enjolras asks Grantaire why he’s pushing him away, and Grantaire doesn’t want to tell him it’s because he hasn’t got his wings, because the mutation has left him broken and not even the scientists would want him as his blood is dark and he’s not a pure human. Enjolras guides his hand to the downy feathers at the top of his wings, where they merge into the skin of his back. Grantaire tells himself this is meant to be intimate, that touching like this is regarded as more intimate than sex, but he feels nothing and he thinks his heart might have turned to stone. Enjolras is curled loosely around him when he sleeps, but it could be anyone lying next to Grantaire. He tries his best to swallow his sobs, he is broken and he doesn’t fit. 

He wakes in the night with a scream, and it wakes Enjolras. His back is on fire and he tears at the covers and the t-shirt he sleeps in to try and get it off. He feels as though he’s been stabbed, and he’s sure if he were to press his hands against his back he would find blood.

Enjolras is confused, it is not supposed to happen like this. It is painless, until you first try to slide your wings away, and then it’s a jarring pain that comes when you try and fit something big in a place too small. He calls Combeferre and Joly and they’re both asleep but it’s Enjolras who cries down a phone line and when he speaks to them convinces them to hurry.

Grantaire is in agony, and he writhes. He thrashes and he scratches at his skin. He is burning all over, a flame between his shoulders sending his back into spasm and he knows something is wrong which makes him panic, he thinks of Courfeyrac who screamed when he got his wings and who will never fly and he feels sick, he is going to be sick. He cannot help himself anymore, he screams and he doesn’t mean to cry. The pain is making his head fuzzy, it is blinding him. He can hear who he thinks if Combeferre and Jehan, but he cries out for Courfeyrac who understands this pain. Courfeyrac with his broken wing that will never fly. 

He can tell there is something wrong when someone, he assumes it’s Joly because he can hear Combeferre and Enjolras and Jehan behind his head, pulls the shirt over his head and he hears a sob. 

Grantaire can’t see, but where Enjolras saw the marks on his back there are now two raised lines of green and black. Combeferre has never seen of this happening before, there’s not even an indication as to whether Grantaire’s wings will even come through. Combeferre tells Enjolras to look away, and he does. Grantaire is sobbing blindly as Combeferre works on his back, his tears falling and he doesn’t want Enjolras to see him like this.

The pain makes him exhausted, but it deprives him from sleep. He can’t make out the mutterings but he can tell they’re worried. He thinks he is dying. His whole body is burning on a funeral pyre and the wings he so wanted will kill him. He is the last one left, and natural selection had decided his fate for him. 

Enjolras left when Courfeyrac arrived, only when Combeferre ordered him to get some sleep and Courfeyrac had been with him since. He can’t remember much, he just knows that there is worried muttering and Courfeyrac holds him so he can rock him. Grantaire feels heavy, and he wants to sleep so desperately.

He falls asleep before Enjolras returns, and he wakes two and a half hours later and he thinks he is dying. The pain gets sharper, and he can see pools of dark blood on his sheets. Enjolras has linked his fingers through his and his eyes are red.

“I’m sorry about your sheets.” 

Enjolras brings his hand to his lips in the absent minded way he does when they’ve just woken up each morning. Grantaire thinks he looks exhausted, and he doesn’t believe he slept at Courfeyrac’s. He flinches each time Grantaire screams and begs for something, for morphine or for whiskey or for both at the same time. 

“I am dying.”

He tells Jehan, and his voice is rough and hoarse. He’s not sure of what time has passed, but they all look tired. Enjolras finally has fallen asleep at the foot of his bed, his hair catching the sunlight and shining the same gold that you can see on his red feathers. 

Jehan doesn’t try and hide that he’s crying, he just kisses Grantaire’s forehead and hopes that he is wrong.

Combeferre cannot fix Grantaire, and he is one of the best doctors Grantaire knows. It has been a week when his body gives up completely, tired of fighting the fire that burns between his shoulders. They cannot take him to a hospital, it’s too late now. They wouldn’t know what to do either, instead they’d send him away like all the others who grew broken wings. Combeferre has never seen anything like this at all.

\---

It is Jehan who notices the feather in Enjolras’ wing. It is green and black, like that of a mallard duck. It shimmers and catches his eye in the light when Enjolras doesn’t realise he’s looking at him.

\---

Grantaire has shut down to the world, and he lies with cracked lips and a fever that runs through his whole body. Combeferre is trying his best to just keep him alive, Jehan kisses his forehead and tells him that it’s nearly over. Grantaire isn’t sure what he means by over.

\---

Grantaire thinks of all the times he’s known love in his life, and he can only think of a handful. He is weak and his mind is foggy. He remembers the time Éponine stole him an apple off the stand when family five had locked him outside again after he smashed the vase of foster-mother five. He remembers the time that his sketch was called beautiful. He remembers the first time he saw Jehan, and he was exactly as he’d sketched him and his heart had leapt into his throat. He remembers the first time he saw Enjolras, and his heart had stopped beating all together because of this strange, impossible boy. He remembers the time he woke up in his bed and can’t remember how he got there, the same bed he’s in now, and he remembers the time Enjolras kissed his way up the tattoo on his arm and told him he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Enjolras, Grantaire thinks of Enjolras and he thinks of all the love he gives him and he thinks that he’s never told him about how he paints him and how he should have probably told him he loves him.

Enjolras thinks the same.

**Author's Note:**

> oh god so I love wings and this idea comes from something I toyed with years ago regarding two different characters.
> 
> I have a headcanon where when you fall in love, you grow a feather that matches their wings.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~I really want to expand on this but I have a lot still to do for Bubbles I'm sorry~~
> 
>  
> 
> anyone who knows me knows I love wings and the ideas that come with them and the mutation of the scientist wanting to create a superhuman so I hope this all makes sense.
> 
> this is a total plot bunny and the idea sort of stuck with me I guess.


End file.
